Master Magnetic Masks

Use artificial intelligence (AI) to create cartoon effects in Final Cut Pro

- GEORGE CAIRNS

macOS FINAL Cut Pro's Draw Mask tool enables you to manually place control points around a subject and create a mask that makes the subject's background become transparent. In this way, you can creatively combine two parallel video layers in the timeline and make a subject on the top layer walk through a cartoon version of their environment on the layer below.

However, if your subject is moving, you will need to manually reposition each of the mask's many control points and add new keyframes for every frame of video in the clip. This step-by-step mask-editing operation can take hours to perform. Thanks to the new AI-powered Magnetic Mask tool, you can instantly isolate a complex subject, and the mask will automatically adjust its shape for every frame of video in just a few seconds.

We'll demonstrate this by isolating a walking girl from a busy city background. We'll then use the mask to combine her with a filtered version of the video clip to create the effect of a real person walking through a comic book world.

HOW TO Apply a Magnetic Mask

1 Create a cartoon